Poorly Phrased AP Tweet About Dutch Plane Terrifies Everyone

KHARKIV, UKRAINE - JULY 23: A Dutch military transport plane containing the bodies of crash victims from Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 takes off for the Netherlands following a departure ceremony on July 23, 2014 in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed killing all 298 on board including 80 children. The aircraft was allegedly shot down by a missile and investigations continue over the perpetrators of the attack. (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)Source:
Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The unfortunate tweet was clearly a mistake, but came across in a very misleading way. It's basically alesson in the perils of using mediums like Twitter to relay breaking news on sensitive topics. If the AP's tweet had been, say, a headline for an article, even an identical would have been offset by all the context and explanation printed underneath. But on Twitter, no such context was included.

Quite to the contrary, in fact. The update was considered a "breaking" news development, and the AP didn't include a link to a related article or any further information. Besides that, there were still changes they could've made that would've averted all the confusion — adding in a couple commas, for example. It took the AP a mere nine minutes to recognize the problem and correct the record, but nine minutes is an eternity for a Twitter account with over 3.5 million followers. Here's what they sent out early Wednesday morning.

[Twitter Embed: https://twitter.com/AP/statuses/491943480407883777]

See the problem there? In reading the tweet aloud, it becomes pretty clear what it means to say — that a Dutch plane, carrying the bodies of the victims of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, landed in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. But because of the way the AP worded the tweet, it was open to a much different, disturbing interpretation, seeming to say that the very plane tasked with carrying the MH17 victims' remains had itself crash landed.